Tie me up, tie me down, Part 2

In my ongoing effort to be the most unattractive and awkward sleeping partner in the history of this planet, I tied my legs together last night.

OK, I didn’t really do it just to look weird. 

It’s related to my new “oh crap, I’m old” ailment – my hip has been killing me.  Particularly when I sleep, I have for several months been waking up with pain in my lower back and hip.  On my left side, the pain is so great in front and in back that I can barely turn over in the middle of the night. I talked to my doctor about it and about the fact that my left knee is crap.  We agreed to start with an x-ray of my knee.  Maybe get one of my hip.  In the  meantime – more pain.  And then I realized that, while I sleep – my right leg is fairly straight but my left leg tends to get quite askew in the middle of the night.  It moves out and twists. 

I was suspecting this could be the cause of my mainly nighttime pain.  So, last night I grabbed my trusty bathrobe tie and knotted it loosely around my legs right above my knees.  My legs were able to move a tiny bit but it kept my left leg from straying too far during the night.

Night 1 of Operation Tie Legs and – Sweet! – no waking up at 4 a.m. with excruciating pain in my back and left side.  hmmmmmm……I like this.  Sweetie told me one night of no pain doesn’t prove anything.  I agree.  I’ll try it for a few more nights and see what happens.  I’m hoping I can train my leg to stay put all night on its own.  Seemed to work for my arm, I think.  I haven’t been throwing it over my head a lot since I tied my arm down during the night. So much for doctors – I’ll figure out how to make my body stop hurting it I have to mummify myself to do it!

Kudos to Sweetie who puts up with the ties and knots and extra pillows and mouth guards and ear plugs and all the other signs of my advancing age. 

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30-somethings in the land of the young…

…wooooooo!

This is fun and slightly hilarious.

In light of my upcoming nuptials, some of my dearest friends decided they would organize our very own Bachelorette Party. Wheeeee!

I gotta hand it to my gals – they know how to organize a fantastic getaway. We had the most decadent, fun, relaxing weekend. We shared dinner. We went dancing. We shared lunch. We went to a spa. ahhhhh!!

I have to make one funny observation from our jaunt out on the town last night: I am soooooooo very very unhip. While I sit in my car and listen to NPR, the young folks of the urban lands are listening to music like I’ve never heard before. I admit it – I haven’t been out dancing in a real club for……..when was the last bachelorette party I went to?……well, it’s been years. And it’s been over 15 years since I went out dancing more than once a year. And my friends and I are stuck in the 80s during our own private dance crazes.

But out we went, my brave friends and I. One of whom actually goes out on a regular basis. And one of whom listens to MTV on a regular basis and recognized most of the songs being played.

Me? Pretty clueless. The kids on my street are all under 13 or so. I don’t work with 20-somethings anymore. I don’t watch MTV because I was under the impression they don’t actually play VIDEOS anymore. *sigh*

Never a good dancer to begin with, I was somewhat grateful for a packed dance floor to hide my stumbles while I stared up at video screens showing videos of songs everyone else seem to know. Lil Mama. huh? Lady Sovereign. ehh??  Bob Sinclar. wha?? Justin Timberlake. Oh!! I’ve heard of him!! Sweet.  It was pretty funny. I was probably the oldest person in the room, but hey – you know what? I’m only getting married once, and if my friends and I want to use the opportunity to dance ourselves to exhaustion like we used to, I say “Yea for us!!”  Although it seems that exhaustion came a tad bit faster than I recollect it did 10 years ago.

It is also interesting to note that the age-old Club behavior still applies. For me it is “DO NOT make eye contact with anyone for more than 2 seconds.” I love to look around at all the people, and it’s fun to see how people dance and it’s just nice to see people having a good time. BUT, inevitably, if you make eye contact with a guy for more than 2 seconds, he takes it as an invitation to come over and dance with you. And I use “dance” loosely. It’s more – his own private grope fest. My friends and I had to rescue each other a couple of times during the night. Ug.

I was pretty excited when I heard Bob Sinclar’s song sampling that good ol’ dance staple of my youth – C & C Music Factory’s “Everybody Dance Now.” Nice to see the kids acknowledging the classics. Ha! I’m classic (that’s one word for it).  

Wanna know what the kids are dancing to these days?

Check it out…..

Lil Mama – Lip Gloss

Bob Sinclar – Rock This Party

Lady Sovereign……

I don’t think I can post anything and not have to change this entry to “Mature Content.”

And, if you are like me, here is one you may know.

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Good Counsel

So, Sweetie and I have been attending some pre-marital counseling sessions. Given the chance, we would not have thought to do this ourselves. But, we asked my old pastor to travel to marry us, and my church has for years asked their new prospective married couples to get pre-marital counseling before marriage.

So, off we went.

I think we are a breath of fresh air for the woman we’ve been talking to. She rarely has people come in *before* some sort of relationship breakdown occurs. Here we sit in front of her – attentive to what she has to share, agreeing in many of our answers, downright laughing out loud together. And, thanks to a couple of consistent communication snafus we have, it’s been advantageous to attend these sessions. She’s not asking a lot of questions – or trying to figure things out. We told her a couple of things we recognize as problems. And she’s been sharing some interesting communication tools with us. These are not rocket science ideas. But, due to the fact that a) we’ve been together long enough we have our own form of “shorthand” way of talking, and b) we are both old and stubborn, and c) we both have feelings that are sometimes sensitive – we tend to not take the time to follow some simple steps of communication. We don’t always take time out of the day to really check in with each other. And, when we have something to complain about, we tend to just burst out with a complaint. Not necessarily asking each other if “hey is this a good time to jump down your throat about something” or “hey, here is something constructive to suggest, along with a small complaint.”

Simple stuff, huh?

Not really. I’d love to say we’re one of those couples that never, ever argue. Not about anything. Not ever. Kiss kiss.

We’re not. We’re foible-y humans (see above, re: old and stubborn). We get tired. We get stressed. One of us gets cramps from time to time.

So, I say – bravo to pre-marital counseling! I think it’s giving us some good tools that we can use for the rest of our marriage. I think, for young couples out there, it’s probably good to talk to someone about what bumps in the road you can hit before you commit. Maybe it’s good just to talk to someone about why you want to commit to this other person. It doesn’t take that much time. We’re busy. We’re working and planning a wedding. But, if this whole thing called Marriage is something we’re willing to spend so much time on, isn’t it worth it to sit down and talk about what that all means before you do it? Or just talk about something as simple as communication? hmmm….

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Friday’s Feast #10

Join the Feast HERE.

Appetizer
Describe your laundry routine. Do you have a certain day when you do it all, or do you just wash whatever you need for the next day?

Routine? I prefer chaos, thank you very much.

Pile laundry. Pile until there is enough laundry to sort, or until I can’t walk into my closet anymore.

Sort laundry. Wash laundry. Dry laundry, while hanging various articles of clothing over doorknobs. Take warm, dry, clean laundry out of dryer and toss onto guest bed. Close door until I need a fresh towel or shirt. I hate folding laundry.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Soup
In your opinion, what age will you be when you’ll consider yourself to truly be old?

Yesterday. The age of yesterday.

Salad
What is one of your goals? Is it short-term, long-term, or both?

Pull off a fun, enjoyable wedding. Short term.

Pull off a long, successful, happy marriage. Long term.

Main Course
Name something unbelievable you’ve seen or read lately.

Unbelievable? You want to see unbelievable? I’ll show you unbelievable!

Magical Trevor

Dessert
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how happy are you today?

I’m feeling goofy, so I guess a 7 today. Would be better, but I had to spend a lot of time cleaning and dusting. Yuck. Hate dusting almost as much as folding laundry. HA!

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